A Jigger of Blog

Paul Clarke at Cocktail Chronicles is shrill:

Y’see, in case you haven’t noticed in this whole cocktail renaissance that’s been under way for some time, there’s been a great deal of emphasis placed on precision, nuance and the ideal of esoteric ingredients. God knows I’ve done my part to push this whole thing along, but recently — and I’m certainly not alone in this — it’s all begun to seem a bit much. While I can still bore a bystander to tears when chatting with another cocktail geek, I’ve been at the point for a while where I honestly don’t give a shit about all the dogma and detail anymore. For all the heated debate about historical ingredients and the true origins of certain old classics, ultimately these are just drinks we’re talking about — they’re just fucking drinks. By getting too caught up in rigid formulae and absolute rules, we as a generation of drinkers are at risk of missing the most essential point: a drink is made for simple enjoyment, and different drinks please the drinker in different ways. And for me, with the whole sloughing off of rigidity and relaxing with things that simply taste good, few drinks fit the bill better than old-fashioned punches.

This is just so spot-on. Not to say there shouldn’t be care and attention paid to making good cocktails, but at some point, this is about fun, enjoyment, and relaxation, not “dogma and detail.”